


The truth of things

by msmorland



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: F/M, Wedding Planning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-27 18:19:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14431410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmorland/pseuds/msmorland
Summary: It’s just that small shard of her teenage self that stops her sometimes, when she catches sight of him cooking in their kitchen or coaching at Gadbois or laughing at his brothers and the kids over Skype. That insidious thought: Tessa Virtue, who do you think you are? To have this? It sends her tumbling back to their years in Canton, the way she would hug her pillow to herself at night and imagine a future with Scott. A future with Olympic medals, yes, hopefully multiple, but a future with other things, too. Sweeter things. Quieter things. Embarrassingly domestic things.





	The truth of things

**Author's Note:**

> The first few lines of this came into my head and I decided to just see where it went...and the result is this somewhat meandering imagined look inside the head of Tessa Virtue. I'm not sure this is even my headcanon for them, but it was fun to see where the story took me.

Telling the world, in the end, is anticlimactic.

Tessa posts a photo of her engagement ring to Instagram with a neutral comment, not even mentioning Scott. Honestly, she would rather they keep even this to themselves—the simple ring is so _her_ , and she doesn’t want anyone’s opinion on it but Jordan’s and her mother’s—but she knows they can’t get away without some kind of announcement.

Scott, in a move they haven’t strategized, leaves a comment on the photo almost immediately. “Come on, T, 21 years together and I don’t even get an @?”

She banters back, because even on social media, even in public, sometimes she can’t help herself. “21 years...I’m only just now thinking about how many anniversaries we’ll have to celebrate once we’re married.”

And the Internet—which Tessa thought couldn’t get any more obsessively interested in them than it already was—goes absolutely crazy.

* * *

Scott meant his anniversary comment as a joke, but the more they talk about it, the more they realize it doesn’t have to be.

A few reporters have asked if they plan to marry on the anniversary of one of their major competition wins, and each time, they smile, laugh it off, explain that they’re just happy to be together and haven’t finalized any of their wedding decisions yet. That’s not actually true—they’ve spent plenty of evenings looking at flowers and colors and, more enjoyably, messing around in the kitchen to choreograph their first dance, the part of the whole thing they’re looking forward to the most. Those choices, though, are just for them; “haven’t finalized any decisions” is all the press is going to get until they’re officially husband and wife.

All the questions give Tessa an idea, though. At home one night, they’re looking over their calendars together when Tessa says, “I was thinking…”

And Scott says, in their easy habit of finishing each other’s sentences, “September?”

September: the anniversary of their first skate together, that first commitment to each other. In a way, after all, this wedding is just a renewal of vows.

“Yes,” Tessa says. And just like that, after 21 years and all of his girlfriends and her boyfriends and his growing up and her surgeries and their medals, their long tally of wins and losses, of drifting toward each other and away, they sync, as easy as breathing.

They set a date. They schedule their wedding.

* * *

It amazes Tessa that, after 21 years, they still have things to learn about each other. Maybe in the area of wedding planning in particular, because in all that time, this was the one thing they never really discussed. Tessa, at least, never wanted to look too closely at the idea of them each marrying other people.

So she never knew (though she might have guessed) that Scott will joke a dozen times about having their wedding at the Ilderton rink, but that really he wants a traditional ceremony, except that he plans to write his own vows.

“I wrote them years ago, T,” he says, easily, when she asks about it.

“You did?” Tessa says.

“I mean, not written down, but—I know what I want to say.”

And again, she isn’t surprised, exactly. She’s heard what he says about her in interviews; she sees Scott “heart-eyes” Moir up close and (very, very) personal every day. She knows how he feels about her.

What she wants to know, she realizes, after puzzling over it for days, is whether he ever felt this way—this huge, all-encompassing way, the way she has only ever felt for Scott—for anyone else, any of the other girlfriends she met and did her best to befriend.

But no, that isn’t quite it—she wants to know if the two of them were always as inevitable as she felt they were. She understands only now, now that it’s all settled, that she still feels silly about it, embarrassed, a little bit, somewhere deep in her core. About all those years she spent pining for Scott while he seemed very busy with other people. How angry and sad and _betrayed_ she used to feel because it seemed so easy for him, because he could speak so lovingly about her in front of the cameras, display affection so freely, and then turn around and build relationships with other people.

That had been one of the hardest things to face, when she was recovering from surgery, and again when they stopped competing after Sochi: the fear that it all hadn’t meant as much to him as it meant to her. That she needed Scott more than he needed her.

She knows now how not-true that is, and she’s known since long before he put the ring on her finger. In no way does she doubt him.

It’s just that small shard of her teenage self that stops her sometimes, when she catches sight of him cooking in their kitchen or coaching at Gadbois or laughing at his brothers and the kids over Skype. That insidious thought: _Tessa Virtue, who do you think you are? To have this?_ It sends her tumbling back to their years in Canton, the way she would hug her pillow to herself at night and imagine a future with Scott. A future with Olympic medals, yes, hopefully multiple, but a future with other things, too. Sweeter things. Quieter things. Embarrassingly domestic things.

She isn’t scared to get married. She knows it’s the right choice for her to spend the rest of her life with Scott. It just bothers her, sometimes, that she still feels like this. It’s the competitor in her, maybe. She’s never been competitive with Scott, doesn’t plan to start now, but that piece of her can’t stand the idea that she was the one waiting around for him to make up his mind all those years.

It’s the one thing about their partnership that feels, somehow, unequal.

* * *

Tessa doesn’t mean to say anything about it. After all, she knows, it’s all fine now. The date is set, the invitations are sent, and they’ve found their happy ending. Tessa can handle a little insecurity.

But she’s forgotten, or willfully ignored, how easily Scott can read her.

They’ve decided they want their first dance as husband and wife to tell a story, the way their programs always have, because even though this dance isn’t a program at all, it’s the most important one they’ll ever choreograph. And this time, they’ll be able to freely admit they aren’t acting.

So every week, they set aside some time to play around with their chosen music, sometimes at home, sometimes at the studio. They lead and follow each other seamlessly, until one afternoon, in the middle of a lift—because yes, of course their wedding dance has lifts—Scott pauses and sets her gently down.

“T,” he says, in that tone he uses when he’s about to say something he wants her to really hear. “This song. Tell me what you’re hearing in it—what’s the story?”

It’s a Patch-and-Marie phrase, _what’s the story_ , one they use when they want to coach the deepest, clearest answers they can from their skaters.

“Well,” Tessa begins, and without meaning to, she reverts to the language they use at the rink. They aren’t Tessa and Scott, they’re characters in a tale they’re telling about some other people. “The girl is longing for the boy and he doesn’t want her back. She’s sad but she can’t help loving him anyway.”

“Hmm,” Scott hums, frowning slightly. He reaches out his hands and she takes them automatically.

“What is it?” Tessa asks. She could make a guess about what he’s thinking, but for once, she doesn’t have a good one.

“Tessa,” he says. Not T, not kiddo, not even Tess. Her full name. His voice is so gentle. “You know that’s not the story, right?”

Tessa is shocked to feel herself tearing up. She shakes her head hard, wills herself not to cry.

“Tess,” Scott says. He opens his arms, and she practically falls into them. He puts his lips to her ear and speaks into it, the same way he’s been doing almost her whole life. It makes her shiver; she’s stopped pretending that it doesn’t.

“T, there was no time when you wanted me that I didn’t want you,” he says. “Name any year. Any _day_.”

There are a dozen dates on the tip of Tessa’s tongue. The days they weren’t speaking. The days of Cassandra and Kaitlyn; those awful days after Sochi. She’s not sure how to find words for the swirling mess, the years of confusion she’s tried to put behind her.

When she pulls back to look at him, Scott is already looking at her. That’s when, finally, she sees it. Scott is looking at her the same way he’s always looked at her. With the same warmth. The same focus. The same love.

Tessa isn’t sure anymore which of them was doing the waiting.

“Okay?” Scott says. He’d asked the same question in the moments after their first real kiss, as Tessa had stared at him, stunned, in the middle of her Montreal kitchen. It had taken her a minute to come back to earth, even all those years after her daydreams in Canton, as her imagined future and her real life suddenly, unexpectedly fused together. She’d wrapped her arms around Scott’s neck and said yes. She was more than okay.

Now, in their shared kitchen, well on the way into that new real life, Tessa smiles. She wraps her arms around his neck and melts into the lift. She lets him see her answer on her face.


End file.
